Dual Panel1“THE wilderness”: an oracle. A day of storms, sweeping through the Negeb, coming from the wilderness, from a land of terror!
2A grim vision is shown to me: the traitor betrayed, the spoiler despoiled. Advance, Elam; up, Media, to the siege! Throw off all weariness!
3At this vision my limbs writhe in anguish, I am gripped by pangs like a woman in labour. I am distraught past hearing, disquieted past seeing,
4my mind reels, sudden convulsions assail me. The evening cool I longed for has become horrible to me:
5the banquet is set, the rugs are spread; they are eating and drinking. Rise, princes, burnish your shields.
6For these are the words of the Lord to me: “Go, post a watchman to report what he sees.
7If it is a column of horsemen in pairs, a column of donkeys, a column of camels, he must be on the alert, fully on the alert.”
8Then the look-out cried: “All day long I stand on the watch-tower, Lord, and night after night I am at my post.
9There they come: a column of horsemen in pairs.” A voice called back: “Fallen, fallen is Babylon, and all the images of her gods lie shattered on the ground.”
10My people, once trodden out on the threshing-floor, what I have heard from the LORD of Hosts, from the God of Israel, I have told you.
11Dumah: an oracle. One calls to me from Seir: “Watchman, what is left of the night? Watchman, what is left of it?”
12The watchman answered: “Morning comes, and so does night. Come back again and ask if you will.”
13“With the Arabs”: an oracle. You caravans of Dedan, that camp in the scrub with the Arabs,
14bring water to meet the thirsty. You inhabitants of Tema, meet the fugitives with food,
15for they flee from the sword, the sharp edge of the sword, from the bent bow, and from the press of battle.
16For these are the words of the Lord to me: “Within a year, as a hired labourer counts off years exactly, all Kedar's glory will come to an end;
17few will be the archers left, the warriors of Kedar.” The LORD the God of Israel has spoken.